Aerial photos show incredible human cost of WW1 as landscape still bears the signs of conflict

Reporter

These poignant drone pictures reveal the incredible human cost of The First World War - showing mass graves and the trenches and bomb craters which still scar the earth.

The images from 125ft up show the scale of the killing - with ranks of white grave markers on the Belgian countryside.

Tyne Cot Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery and Memorial to the Missing is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission burial ground for the dead of the First World War in the Ypres Salient on the Western Front.

It also shows the Lochnagar Crater which marks the site of an explosion from a British mine beneath the German lines signalling the start of the Battle of the Somme.

Each one casts a long shadow on the neat cemetery grass in the evening sun.

Though the grass has grown over most of the signs of war, some scars are still visible from the air.

Shell craters and trenches still disturb the flat green lawns of the memorial at Vimy Ridge in north France where 3,600 Canadians died.

LAnneau de la Mmoire (The Ring of Memory" or "Ring of Remembrance) is a World War I memorial in Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, France.

The ring of memory south-east of Calais bears the names of 576,606 soldiers of 40 nationalities who died in the front's many bloody battles.

Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial has preserved the trenches in memory of the Newfoundland Regiment which was almost completely wiped out on the first day of the Somme.

“It was humbling,” said photographer Tom Maddick, who took the pics on a tour of First World War cemeteries.

“Especially seeing some of the trenches up close, and being among the graves really brings home the scale of it.”

Notre Dame de Lorette, also known as Ablain St.-Nazaire French Military Cemetery, is the world's largest French military cemetery.